Bustle - Cutting Out and Embroidery

When we last left off, I had finished the flat pattern work and was ready to cut everything out.  I prefer to use a rotary cutter for cutting as much as possible, it's much faster.  I have a set of weights that I use to hold down the fabric instead of having to pin it.

Since I had already used this fabric for my corset, I had to be very careful to get everything out and also make sure that I had enough left on the far end, which is already cut at a 45 angle to do bias strips, to get the bias strips out for this.  I managed it, carefully.  I also made sure to leave a strip at the top for the waistband, since the pattern has that made out of ribbon, there isn't a pattern piece for it.  This will be done to match the corset, so I also cut the main pieces out of the cotton organdy (which I acquired from Puresilks.us and it came from India, so shipping took a bit, but it was totally worth it):

The piece closest to the back of the table is the one that will be getting embroidered, so I didn't cut that one out, I only traced around the bottom of the pattern and then left it whole:

It turned out to be a very good thing that I didn't cut this any farther to begin with, as you will see in a minute.  I traced around the bottom of the pattern on both pieces of fabric so that I had a right and a left.  I used my new favorite pen to do this, the FriXion pen, which is amazing for quite a few applications, though it doesn't work well on dark fabrics.

The next bit was interesting, I picked the hoop for my embroidery machine that fit this section the best and looked at where the curve was hitting.  I then used my embroidery software, Embird, to make a curved version of the designs I have been working with, which are from Martha Pullen's Kent State Museum bundle.

As you can see, my first attempt at getting the curve right didn't work, I didn't curve it enough.  I changed the design, moved the hoop up a little and tried again.

It is a very subtle change, but it was enough to get it to fit nicely in the bottom.  I then flipped the design around and did the second side.  Here they are finished and ready for assembly: